


In Bloom

by moteldwelling



Series: In Bloom [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Bipolar Disorder, Coming of Age, Explicit Sexual Content, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Other Additional Tags to Be Added
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-24
Updated: 2020-10-22
Packaged: 2021-03-07 23:20:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 19,541
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26505808
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moteldwelling/pseuds/moteldwelling
Summary: James is leaning against a brick wall, the scarlet dust playing nicely off of his dark hair. Yin and yang, with a dreamlike haze. He’s smoking a cigarette, but the air smells like raw earth, not smoke, and once he sees Steve, he pushes off the wall expectantly. Like he’s been waiting for him.“Well, what took you so long?”Steve’s knees feel like butter and concrete. His veins are syrup. Nobody else is littering the street, which would be odd, in another life, considering the washed out sun is bleaching the alley with midday light. But it’s not strange, not now, because James is waiting for Steve, and that’s all that matters.He takes a step forward.(In which Bucky is new in town, and he's the patch of black ice Steve is about to spin out on.)
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Series: In Bloom [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1937488
Comments: 20
Kudos: 52





	1. Sell the Kids for Food

Steve wonders what it would feel like to slam his face into the cash register so hard, the buttons tattoo numerical symbols onto the fronts of his eyelids.

He’s not deranged. Just bored. Working at a bodega that tended to undergo a dry spell of customers after six had that sort of effect on a person. And Steve has never been one to shy away from lingering on urges that stray into impulse territory, intrusive or not. It’s how he got a black eye for the first time in the sixth grade. And subsequently, every single grade after that. Went big the summer after sophomore year, when he racked up a grand total of _two_ shiners at the same time. Couldn’t see properly for almost a month. 

There are plenty of nice places in New York. Brownstone graveyards and art halls as grand as the Louvre itself, streets of lined concrete to dance along after dosing your coke with Bacardi at the AMC theatre downtown. Old diners. Parks. Cleaned up real nice, perfect to picnic out of when midnight faded to dawn and the foot traffic weaned to nobody but the restless and the sick. Places to dance and fraternize and drink; nice places. Places you can build memories out of to take out in a few years and shine like lumps of gold.

James Madison High was not one of those places. Tigre Mart Gas N' Food is not one of those places.

If the iron bolted windows couldn't tell you that much, the bulletproof glass would.

A figure ambles out of the backroom, bringing with him a wave of Irish Soap and patchouli incense. Alessandro, Steve’s boss, comes into view, donning a grimace and tugging on a jacket almost darker than the black oil-slick of hair sitting atop his head. Full-blooded Italian, he had narrow brown eyes, one hell of a mean streak, and generally tended to look the other way whenever Steve showed up fifteen minutes late - New York transit was a _bitch_ \- so long as he didn’t shirk his responsibilities of cleaning the co-ed bathroom before closing.

“You,” Alessandro starts, pointed finger honing in on Steve’s face like a bullseye. An unlit cigarette causes the corner of his scowling mouth to drag, a suicide jump to the linoleum. He looked a bit like Clint Eastwood when he did that. Steve hasn’t dared to say it out loud yet. 

“Any more shoplifters while you’re on the clock, and it’s coming out of _your_ paycheck.”

Steve bites back a retort on how the entire crux of shoplifting was to evade the guy behind the counter - aka, Steve, Tuesdays through Saturdays - so it wasn’t as if he was actively _trying_ to let people steal from under his nose. He cans it, though. Alessandro never really takes kindly to backtalk.

“Tell me you’re hearing me, Rogers.” 

Steve flashes double thumbs-up with the sort of mock enthusiasm that only secretly depressed 1950’s housewives seemed to carry, pearly whites on display like scrubbed porcelain. Quite honestly he was still letting his thoughts linger on flashbacks to getting the shit beat out of himself in school. He should have fought back more, he really should have. Looking back, the consequences meant nothing.

The world’s longest glare, and Alessandro leaves then, fading off like a week old bruise, taking with him his aura of scents and smells that always made Steve’s nose itch. An eternity seems to tick past in his wake. Alessandro wasn't talkative company, but he was someone to share space with. Mind on broken cartilage and vegetable bag ice packs alike, the blonde resumes the act of thumbing through an old Vox magazine - he always had some sort of reading material around. It’s an issue about none other than music legend Kurt Cobain, plastered across the glossy front page and cocking an electric blue guitar like a gun. 

Steve thought Kurt was a god.

Sarah Rogers was the nineties’ golden child. She had gifted her son not only her humility, but a knowledge of all things pop-culture related pre 2002, _and_ a love of classic grunge. (Frankly, Steve had her waistline, too.) Soundgarden, Alice In Chains, Mudhoney, etcetera, etcetera. If they screamed about sorrow and sex, chances were that Sarah Rogers had seen them in concert. Nirvana was her absolute favorite, though. Steve has vivid memories of getting picked up from kindergarten by his beauty queen of a mother in Doc Martens the same color as her baby blues, a walkman attached to her hip playing _In Utero,_ while all the other moms wore khakis and corduroys and turned up their noses at Sarah, a single mother in baggy denim strung over her hips with shoelaces, picking up her child to take him home, where only the two of them lived. By golly, what a _horror._

Those same women would probably choke at the fact that their husbands' gazes secretly lingered on Sarah, who was years younger than the rest of them and miles prettier, with her cornsilk hair and glass skin. Screw all those other ignorant cats; Steve was _happy._ He grew up with good music, a parental figure that loved him, and strong values. He learned to never rely on a man, or anyone, for that matter, over things you could learn yourself.

As far as Steve was concerned, he had his mother and a double-sided vinyl of Pearl Jam’s best hits raising him, and that was enough. 

Back in reality, the shop’s front door breaches open with a creaky swing, the movement setting off the string of bells that sat above it. So engrossed in the mag, Steve nearly slips off the spinning chair he’s perched on when he finally glances up and gets an eyeful of the kid taking up the doorway.

“Kid” is generous - this guy had to be at least Steve’s tender age of nineteen. Maybe older, but definitely not by much; he still had that whole scrubbed clean look about him that people under twenty-four shone with. That’s where the innocence ended, though, because he was also intimidating as all _shit._

Tall, face bloomed stormy with a nasty look, but not necessarily like he was angry with his immediate surroundings. It was more along the lines of how something completely unrelated was brewing around in his mind. Steve had seen the look before. Exhausted construction workers stumbling about in search of nicotine patches and a nuked meal, college students scrambling inside for a two A.M. coffee binge, mothers with babies on their hips and migraines on the horizon.

People who wore their stories on their faces, no matter how clouded.

The guy crosses the floor in two brisk, hunched strides - a man on a _mission_ \- and rests his palms flat against the counter with a dull thud. Steve jumps. Magazine Kurt creases.

“Can I get a pack of Marlboros - red. Scratch that, gold. The lights.”

He doesn’t phrase it like a question, per say, but it’s more than the two syllable grunts of brands Steve is all but used to receiving from some of the more dirty looking men around these parts; orders, like this is some sort of fast food drive thru, borderline _demands._ Believe it or not, manners don’t bleed thick in the heart of New York.

The guy bores straight into Steve as he speaks, too, leaning over the counter as much as he can and articulating the words like it was extremely imperative to his life that he gets a pack of smokes, _now,_ from this very convenience store. There’s something fierce in his blue eyes that suggests the world might end if he doesn’t. There's a storm brewing in them. He’s broad but lean, hard as nails yet easy on the eyes - a conundrum to end all conundrums. The popped collar of his jacket plays up how slender his neck is.

The whole thing is so abruptly intense that Steve finds himself reaching up for where they keep the yellow streaked boxes of Marbs next to the stacks of 100’s without even really thinking about it. He hesitates then, fingers already wrapped around the plastic.

“Are you even old enough for...?”

A deadpan statement, similar to the one he had just received himself. The FDA had recently upped the legal purchase age of tobacco to twenty-one, and, sure, this kid isn’t exactly Shirley Temple, but he also didn’t look much older than a high school senior. First year of college, _maybe._ But the boy doesn’t miss a beat, not even blinking as he leans a breath closer. At least, Steve swears that he does. It's hard to tell - this guy moves like the ocean's tide. Pulling, pulling, difficult to pinpoint until it's upon you, all at once.

“Absolutely.”

He smells like cold air and motor oil. Steve notices how short his nose is, fine and angled, like a spade.

“Show me some I.D. then.”

The guy scowls. A tendon in his neck dances. “C’mon, I’m-”

Steve jerks his head towards the other end of the store. “Man, we have cameras. So show. Me. Some. I.D.” 

Recognition blooms on the brunette’s face. “Ah...” He digs into his back pocket then, retrieving first a scrappy leather wallet before scattering a litany of cards onto the glass top before them. He slides them all across the counter, and Steve fumbles one at random between his fingers, scanning for a date of birth.

It’s a business card for the butcher’s down the street. Steve doesn’t ask why the guy presumably just came from a butcher shop.

It’s a convenience store in Brooklyn. He’s seen weird. He’s learnt not to ask.

Instead, he pulls a face, and exchanges that card for - voila - a midwest licensed I.D. Just as he’d suspected - James Barnes isn’t even twenty. Hell, he’s even louring in the picture, making the whole thing look more or less like a mugshot.

Now, those beady eyes are drilling holes straight into Steve’s brain. James’ lips are raw and chapped, thick hair a mess that looked about as soft as beach grass, and there’s an explosion of faded bruise casting almost minuscule red dots over his clavicle. A hickey, clinging on for dear life, maybe. Absentmindedly, he raps his knuckles against the countertop, and Steve can see that a few are split, like he got into a fight a while back and didn’t really care enough to invest in an ointment of some kind. 

Strangely enough though, he doesn’t look bad or anything. A little roughed up, but in a beguiling way. Like, enough to inspire _that_ feeling, the one you get when you’re watching a movie, and a certain character shows up - _the_ character - and they’re just so full of life and ethos that all you can really think to do is search-term them on YouTube and pore over each related hit, just because they were so interesting?

Yeah.

Steve swallows. A moment too late, he realizes he’s still holding James’ I.D., and thrusts it back across the threshold. “Alright...you're good.” 

The brunette bares his teeth like a wolf. It doesn’t reach his eyes - purposely - and Steve finds himself getting flustered under the cheshire act. It’s a brilliant grin, dangerous like a loaded gun - bold and flashy and impossible to look away from. 

He rings up the pack, and then James is leaning over the counter even further to point at the other brands of cigarettes sitting above Steve’s own head. “Newport shorts, too, and ah .. American Spirits, black. No, no - yellow. Yeah, yellow. Let me get some Winstons, too. Two packs. Uh .. the menthols. And, uh, throw in a thing of Camels … Camel blues, yeah. Shit, you don’t happen to carry any of those Zig Zag packs for blunt rolling, do you?”

He reaches to the side of the cash register then, and nabs a piece of Nicorette gum to place atop the mountain of cigarettes building before him like an offering to an ancient god. Steve is honestly blown away. Surely, these can’t _all_ be for the brunette, but, again, golden rule - if you like your teeth's current placement, don’t ask questions.

(And make sure the toilets sparkle if you show up late.)

But because he’s also so _irrevocably_ Steve, he can’t help but to crack a reference. “Alright, Eastwood, your total is-” 

James pays in cash - the entire sum of all those cigarettes is high, but what kind of nineteen-year-old carries crumpled Benjamin Franklins with them? Paying with cash takes a bit longer than with card, because Steve has to figure out the math, and it gives James ample time to throw off the blonde once again. Rather, throw him off more so than what he already was.

“Cobain is the man.”

Steve blinks. “Huh?”

James taps on the Vox with a single nail, before running both hands through his hair - making entire chunks stand at attention for the dull fluorescents hung above. “Nirvana,” he explains. “Good band.”

Sweet baby Jesus.

Steve controls himself to a dignified nod, handing James the meager sum of his change. “They certainly do not make ‘em like they used to.”

James leans against the counter once more, so suddenly Steve has to blink again. _“Right?”_ Bag in arm then, he steps back to give Steve a cool once-over. 

“So. Thanks for not being a killjoy.”

“Thanks for not being a cop.” He shoots back. James’ mouth tilts into a lazy smirk, and Steve notices how both his bottom and top lip are almost equally full.

The brunette makes for the door then, ducking back only at the very last second, when the actual door is craned open wide and Steve can make out distant traffic across the street.

“What’s your name?” Another smoldering gaze. Furrowed brow, set jaw, intense eye contact. Did this James always have a way of making mundane questions on par with interrogation tactics? 

Steve quirks an eyebrow. “Steve?” He says it like he’s not quite sure.

“Steve...?” James cues, windmilling his free arm in an attempt to prompt Steve further. Steve bites back a laugh; he can already tell James was the kind of kid who was popular in school just ‘cause other kids simply couldn’t get enough of being in the spotlight of his attention. The strikingly good looks must’ve helped, too, just a tad.

“Steven Grant?” He furthers. It’s his middle name - Steve knows better than to give the whole shebang out to strangers on this side of Brooklyn, but it’s not like he’s _lying_ or anything.

“Steven Grant,” James laments, voice taking a theatrical hilt. He shakes the bag of cigarettes. “Nicotine plug. Convenience store clerk. Fellow sludge enthusiast. You saved my life. I could kiss you. I could _kiss_ you. Seriously. I'd plant one on you right now if it wasn't for that damned glass cockblocking our lips right now. I bid you adieu, my brother of good musical taste.”

With that, he dips into a dramatic flourish of a bow, biceps flexing involuntarily. Spinning straight around on the heel of a sole boot, he propels the shop’s door open once more and disappears with the ringing of bells punctuating his departure. He doesn’t look back once.

Steve thinks that if he sits very quietly, and very still, he’ll be able to figure out what the fuck just happened.

* * *

The sky is the color of dirty dishwater. Night was falling like some sort of film curtain, the show freshly concluded, and Steve tugged the collar of his jacket a touch closer. It was much too early in the summer to actually submerge the land in that bone-drenching cold an East Coast Autumn brought, but New York was a temperamental girl: she wasn’t afraid to bite, just to show she could.

At least it wasn’t raining. Steve had his license, but he shared the family truck, a beat up old Ford, with his mom - sometimes his uncle, too, if he was around - and preferred not to take it to work, could he help it, lest he’d strand his poor mother.

(For the record, Sarah Rogers would probably smack her progeny upside the head if she heard him refer to her as his “poor mother.”)

He’s coming to the end of a suburb now, row houses long faded into more sparsely placed fixer-uppers. Close enough to feed into each other yet, but each one complete with a yard, and a fence, and, more often than not, a couple of trees dotting the grass.

Steve cuts through an alleyway. Dust kicks up under his boots, and he traces a couple of fingers along the bite of the wooden fence nearest. Then, he halts entirely and pops the latch of the gate up, slipping inside and letting it shut behind him with a sickening creak. 

The doberman chained to a clothesline pole raises his head with a low snarl. Long ago, Steve would’ve been afraid of the creature and its tendency to give chase - specifically, to the mailman - but he comes through this way often enough to where a sort of kinship has formed. The Milk-Bone treats he brings sometimes have made sure of that much.

“Heya, Chop. I don’t have anything for you today, sorry, boy.” He gives the dog a quick stroke straight down the back as he passes on his way to the shed across the yard, barely slowing stride enough to do so. Chop whines lazily, retreating back to his nap with the mental deduction that no treat = no interest for Steve. 

Steve can hear voices dying down inside the shed as he accidentally kicks up a patch of loose gravel. Someone shushes someone else. It reminds him of attending parties busted by the cops back in the James Madison days, and he can already imagine his friends inside hurriedly stashing their weed.

A bit too much of an ass to call out _hey guys, it’s just me,_ Steve opts for the more traditional route he knows down to the marrow of his bones: the secret knock. Three raps against the door, wait a beat, two more, and then a lead footed _kick._

The door flies open. Blocking the entryway is Margaret Elizabeth Carter, standing like a firecracker in dark stockings, a slip dress, and her five-foot-seven glory. Despite the height, she has to crane her neck to make smoldering eye contact with Steve. It’s been years since his growth spurt, and he’s still proud of the feat. 

“Well, where the bloody hell have you been!”

Not waiting for an answer, she grabs Steve by the wrist and spins back on her heels to drag him inside the shed. Literal heels; no bigger than needlepoints and a couple sizes too big for her feet. Weirdly enough, she pulled them off better than anybody else who would’ve been fitted in the right size. 

“Sorry, sorry, Pegs,” he apologies. “I didn’t have the car today.”

“Well, Christ, Rogers, you scared the bejeezus out of us. We thought you were a neighbor, or worse - Nat’s dad.”

The thought alone is enough to make Steve feel a little guilty. “Sorry.” He repeats, and then the two of them are squeezing behind a tool bench and coming face to face with the other half of the quartet.

Natasha sits still on a yellow couch like a possum in headlights - though her kohl rimmed eyes remind Steve more of Bambi than anything else - and a thin joint is suspended in the air halfway to her pursed lips, the tip already stained with a ring of pink lipstick. She’s perched in such a way that cherry-red underwear is on display for the world under a hiked skirt, and palpable relief floods her face at the visible confirmation of, yes, it’s just Steve.

“Shit, it’s you. We heard footsteps and thought it was my dad.”

Next to her, Sam keeps his arm wrapped loosely over the back of the couch without a care in the world. He’s not even high; Sam generally just had that sort of happy-go-lucky personality, like things came to him easily. And they sort of did - he had the prettiest redhead in town currently wrapped under his old letterman jacket.

Plus, he was pretty much the same height as Steve, and could totally take Nat’s dad in a fight. Not that Natasha’s father would try and fight any of them.

“Hey, man.” 

“Hey.” He sticks his fist out for a loose bump against Sam’s. Peggy and Natasha were his friends first - quite honestly, Steve really didn’t think Sam would hang around anymore if him and Nat were to breakup - but Sam was nice, and fun to shoot the shit with. The two of them were cool. 

“How was work, dear?” Natasha teases, her voice taking its usual low rasp now that she’s recovered from the near paternal-induced heart attack. Steve crumples a wrapper from the bottom of his pocket to throw at her, and she dodges it like a cat.

“Fine, thanks.”

Peggy cuts in. She’s kneeling on an old church pew shoved up against the shed’s furthest wall, lighting up a cigarette and trying her damn hardest to blow the smoke out of a barely cracked window, even though it kind of defeated the whole purpose of the shed and their routine to take momentary shelter in it. Steve notices a run in her stocking.

Don't ask them where they got a church pew from. It's a story that involves rats and the dump and split jeans.

“Any weirdos today?”

Steve was used to dealing with a very colorful variety of characters. It came with occasional night shifts. So much so that it became ritual for his friends to inquire, casually, each time they saw him post Tigre Mart - _any weirdos?_

It started last autumn. He was still at the bodega, and had just run into a customer - a man, nearly twice his age - who had offered Steve twenty-five bucks even for three minutes in the alleyway outside. First of all, Steve was offended at the low-ball of his price.

His prick was clearly worth at least fifty. 

And, like, secondly, he couldn’t just leave the store unattended to give a blowjob in a back alley, or whatever the guy had in mind. Naturally, after a very uncomfortable turndown, Steve had brought the news straight to his friends. They had picked apart the tidbit of gossip like crows on something shiny, nipping and plucking till nothing was left to mull over. Ever since then, tradition was born; Steve would go to work, Steve’s friends would inquire about the day. The whole thing had kind of a domestic air about it - despite how much their actual interest dwindled; not as if a rundown convenience store on Fifth was _all_ that exciting - like he was a father returning to his motley crew after a hard day's work. I mean, take out the paternal bit, and that pretty much were the circumstances. 

“Um. Definitely not _weird,_ but I, like, met someone?”

_Okay, maybe a little weird. Just a touch._

Natasha doesn’t even look up from where she’s examining the polish on her thumbs. Steve worked in a convenience store; he meets a lot of people.

“Like...a guy?”

Two pairs of hawk eyes on him instantly. Peggy twists around so quickly, Steve is legitimately panicked that her cigarette is going to catch her curls. 

“A _boy_ someone? You _met_ a boy someone?” Right as Natasha cuts in with, “Spill your _soul,_ Steven.”

Steve groans. “It's not like that. It’s, just-” The anecdote is much more linear in his head. How does he explain the heavy pull in his gut at a random stranger telling him he could _kiss_ him, without being able to physically map out the curve of James’ jaw as he did so? Steve was a better artist than storyteller - it’s why he drew and didn’t, like, write.

“There’s like…there’s this new guy in town. I think he’s new. I’ve never seen him down at the store before.” Before Peggy, ever the realist, could point out that New York was a big place, as she was so prone to doing whenever Steve made any sort of comment along the lines of unfamiliarity, he cuts her off. “His accent isn’t like anything from around here. I dunno. He was just...”

Natasha balances up on her knees to use Steve's torso as a punching bag. “Cute?” She demands.

His face burns, and the girls scream. Sam chuckles politely, like he still can’t figure out if Steve is gay or not after all this time. Spoiler alert: he wasn’t. He _did_ identify as regretful, though, bringing up the blue-eyed boy from the store. _James Barnes._ Steve is honestly not sure why he did it. The desire to was strange, like James was some sort of fictional entity, and the only way to bleed him to reality was to speak him to life; prove that he wasn’t just a bug etched in Steve’s bored brain. 

_Are you guys feeling this too?_

Peggy lights another cigarette. Natasha curls closer to Sam. 

* * *

Ricky Gervais is a stupid, stupid man. Bucky deduces this opinion endearingly, burritoed under two weighted blankets with the glow of his laptop presumably bleaching his eyeballs the color of Swiss cheese.

He didn’t _have_ to watch Netflix in complete and total darkness, but it was cozy. And if Bucky learned anything during his nineteen trips around the sun, it was that life generally didn’t allow much in terms of comfort - you take what you can get.

So little so, that Bucky had even concocted a list of things that brought him joy. Okay, it was a little something that he picked up from an old shrink, but it wasn’t a half bad practice. The principle applied. 

  1. Shitty comedy specials
  2. Marlboro menthols (even though he was thinking of switching brands)
  3. Videos of people on dirt bikes escaping the cops
  4. The word “pilates”
  5. His sister, Beck



Speak of the devil herself - Bucky’s door preens open, regular-people light from the hall shining in and silhouetting the shape of none other than Rebecca Barnes, standing tall with her hands on her hips. Bucky finds himself smirking at how offended she would be to know she ranked lower on his list than _pilates._

“What’s so funny, shitlips? Can I use your deodorant?”

“Your face.” He shoots back like the incredibly mature individual he has been known to be, time and time again. "And yeah."

“Haha, funny guy, aren’t you? And cool, 'cause I just did." Beck shifts her weight. Her nails are wet, and she's wearing jeans. "Take your pills yet?”

Bucky blinks in a way that he hopes is innocent, still swaddled under his blanket burrito. “Yep.”

She raises a single eyebrow before tossing an infamous white and orange pill bottle through the air, underhand style. Bucky catches it with an apologetic grin.

“Interesting, because I’ve had them stashed in my purse all day.”

“Sorry.” He feels like a preening bird. _B-b-busted._

“Take your lamotrigine so you don’t have to be.”

Ah yes, the delicious chalky goodness that made Bucky’s stomach feel like a whirlpool. _Much_ better than the Celexa though, which kept him up for days on end and took a bazooka to his sex drive. What’s the good in not being able to sleep if you can’t even rub one out?

Mentally, he starts going through all the different antidepressants he can name from the top of his head; Prozac, Wellbutrin, Zoloft, Lexapro, Cymbalta. He’s halfway through the MAOIs, having bled the SSRI inventory dry like a _true_ chip off the old block, when he notices Beck is looking at him expectantly yet, like she’s just tried to ask him something and he’s not responding. There are bags under her eyes the color of old fruit that not even a layer of peachy concealer can hide, not completely.

“Sorry, what?”

“I just said it might be worth a shot to get one of those daily pill planner things from, like, Walmart. So you don’t forget to take ‘em. Or, y’know, you don’t OD yourself because you forget that you _did_ take them already.”

Pill planners were juvenile. And ugly. Bucky remembers when he had one, a vomit green thing that smelled like plastic and liked to stick. He lost it. He lost the one before that, too.

And poor, poor Beck, still pretending for the both of them that Bucky _forgets_ to take his pills. The notion alone makes him a little sheepish. A little softer. “Nah, that’s okay. I’ll remember, Beck. Cross my heart.” 

“Hope to die?” She demands. “Stick a needle in your eye?”

Bucky’s grin deepens. “All that shit.” For better or worse, one of the many things he loved about his sister was how she didn’t dance around her wording with him. Someone else, well intentioned but still too sensitive for Bucky’s taste, might bite their tongue at the mention of something like hoping to _die_ around him. It’s happened before; he knows the act like a well-rehearsed play - sour regret, then guilt, then the floundering of “oh, shit, sorry - not like that. I shouldn’t have said that. I didn’t mean it like that. _PleaseDon’tBeTriggeredToKillYourselfOhGodWhatHaveIDone?”_

But Beck is Beck, and Beck does _not_ coddle. Because Bucky is not made of glass. Well, okay - sometimes she coddles. But she also treats Bucky like a normal damn person. Except for when she suggests buying daily pill planners like he’s some elementary schooler on a diet that includes vitamins. Not to insinuate that elementary schoolers who take vitamins weren’t normal people. Bucky offers a mental apology to all elementary schoolers worldwide. 

His sister crosses the room. Kisses the crown of his head, a butterfly's tap that Bucky's sure stains his hair with lip gloss. “Alright, then. It'll be late by the time I'm back. G’night, Bucky bear, love you.”

Still playing off his laptop, the Ricky Gervais standup crowd howls with laughter at something that was said. Bucky is momentarily distracted, so much so that Beck bristles. “Well, say it _back.”_

_“I love you.”_ He proclaims, using the same voice he did the sole time he found himself in a priestly confessional booth, one of the times him and Beck had landed in foster care and ended up with some catholic family for two months. Real bible thumper shit. She flips him off before shutting the door behind herself, leaving Bucky to his Netflix and his blankets and his off-brand antidepressants.

He really does love her. Beck was the one thing in this world that was wholly his, and his alone. It's purely factual, same as how Bucky was also positive on the fact that he could probably hibernate right here under all his bedding. Except for the fact that the real world _beckons._ Meh.

Not all that bad. He's pretty sure he’s scoped out a pretty handy convenience store to frequent.

_Someone_ has to keep that hot blonde behind the register on his toes.

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading chapter one, this fic is my baby. Been considering sharing said baby with the world for quite some time now, but live and let die, y'know? You can find me on tumblr at moteldwelling, and i'll give you a big ol' lipstick kiss if you do.


	2. Weather Changes Moods

James is leaning against a brick wall, the scarlet dust playing nicely off of his dark hair. Yin and yang, with a dreamlike haze. He’s smoking a cigarette, but the air smells like raw earth, not smoke, and once he sees Steve, he pushes off the wall expectantly. Like he’s been waiting for him.

“Well, what took you so long?”

Steve’s knees feel like butter and concrete. His veins are syrup. Nobody else is littering the street, which would be odd, in another life, considering the washed out sun is bleaching the alley with midday light. But it’s not strange, not now, because James is waiting for Steve, and that’s all that matters.

He takes a step forward. 

The world takes a second to crackle into stardust and electricity beneath his feet - soles dipping _through_ the cement - but when it does, it’s a million shards splintering like glass in a dropped mirror. The sidewalk rips straight open into a black hole, sucking and churning. But all the blonde feels is peace. 

* * *

Steve jerks awake. His tongue is a sock, scratchy and cotton dry. For a second, he can’t even place that he’s in his own bed, curled beneath sweat soaked sheets under a poster of Peter Steele. 

What the fuck. Seriously, what the _fuck._

* * *

A week goes by before Steve sees James again. He’s like a dog on a leash - Steve, that is, though James does kind of remind him of a sullen golden retriever - ears perking up at the ring of the bells, of a pair of broad shoulders making themselves known. A not-so familiar head of hair, cropped, but shaggy yet, comes straight through the front door; seven-thirty, just like last time.

Steve honestly thought he’d never see that wildcard again.

“Oh. Hey. Hi.” He all but manages to stutter out. Classy. 

James shoots a suave, two-fingered salute brimming from his forehead before disappearing down the sweets aisle like a breeze on legs. Today, he’s dressed in black jeans so faded they’ve gone grey, shoddily laced boots, and the same jacket as last time. The store is empty, save for the two of them, and Steve feels strangely awkward about it. He sits ramrod still for a second. He wonders if he should say something, try to make conversation. That would probably be weird. But it already felt weird, at the same time, just sitting in silence while a dude who jokingly announced he wanted to play tonsil hockey with Steve lingers twelve feet away.

The dude who Steve had a fuckin’ _dream_ about four nights prior. That alone is enough to make him feel creepy. He’s never considered himself lonely - a touch isolated, _maybe_ \- by any means, but, fuck, stable people don’t just dream about random strangers they meet once, unless their brain was trying to fill some serious gaps. 

Bitterly, Steve cracks a dark joke with himself that he’s the way he is because, hey, maybe Freud was on to something.

Nah.

  
  


He’s made up his mind. He’s not going to initiate conversation with James. He'll reply if he starts something, obviously, but Steve decides this just isn’t the tree to bark up. 

Doesn’t stop his eyes from lingering, though. Boots on linoleum, boots on linoleum. Step, step, step.

When the hell did it get so warm in here? He makes a mental note to screw around with the air conditioning as soon as he gets a moment to himself. Alessandro will be pissed, but then again, most things Steve did generally pissed his boss off. 

James is at the register now. He pops a thing of sunflower seeds onto the counter followed by the largest size of Red Bull they carry, before attempting what sounded like honest to god small talk. 

“So. Store been busy?”

The corner of Steve’s mouth snakes up. He doesn’t meet James' eyes as he punches stuff into the register, voice low. “You christen me your brother in sludge, and now you sound two seconds away from talking about the weather.”

This draws a sudden grin - _a grin!_ \- from James’ mouth. _(So he does remember!)_ He laughs as he hands over a ten dollar bill, leaning against the wooden barrier. “Yeah, well, fuck off. Feels like we’re goin’ backwards, or whatever the hell Kevin Parker said.”

Steve shrugs. “I don’t listen to Tame Impala.”

James’ grin deepens into a smirk. “Neither do I.”

There’s faint dirt under his nails. Steve wants to ask what he does for work, but he’s suddenly shy. “Alright, your total is six-seventy-seven.”

His knuckles brush James’ palm as he casts a handful of change into his hand. James pockets the coins, along with the bills, before nodding once. “Alright, man, see you around.”

He comes in twice the following week. Once the week after that. His fourth appearance is enough to all but smother the butterflies that spark in Steve’s chest - not. 

“Hey!” James calls out. He's standing across the street, faded clothing blending in with the dark sky. Steve glances up from where he’s just flipped the open sign to proclaim _closed_ from where it sits against the main glass window. Twisting the lock again, he props the door open with a booted foot.

“Hey. Sup?”

James stops, places his hands on his hips. He’s about a two parking spots worth of space away, not far enough that Steve can’t make out the slight cleft to his chin. Wet air slicks his eyebrows against his face. He looks a bit like one of those apparitions you'd see in some grungy horror movie, fully enwrapped in the day's mist. “Since when the hell do you close at noon?”

“Oh, ah, we don’t,” Steve explains, as some traffic out on the street starts blaring a Beethoven-worthy symphony. He shakes his box of Camel Filters. “I’m taking a smoke break.” 

“Ah. Gotcha.” James cocks his head. “Let me join you?”

Steve’s knees feel warm, for some peculiar reason. 

“Yeah, sure.” He jerks his head, ushering James to follow him inside.

* * *

James shudders, takes a step closer to where Steve is hunched under the side alley’s awning. Rain plasters the little dark hairs on the back of his neck down to the skin. It’s a dreary day - warm but wet, and dark and _grey,_ yet the city doesn’t sleep. Traffic roars past as they smoke, blurry headlights shining red like the cherry butts of Steve and James’ respective cigarettes. An air conditioner sags dangerously out of a fire escape window, and the alley kind of smells like brownie mix and soggy pot, like someone just lit up in a bathroom after taking a shower.

The brunette takes a long drag. He blows a perfect ring through pursed lips, which Steve tries - and fails - not to stare at. He shakes his head. Swallows.

“So,” James ashes his cigarette into the empty can of coca-cola they’re using in lieu of a bin. “How did Friday end up turning out?”

Steve smiles. He’s referring to the fountain soda machine that gave out. Something internal had sprung a leak, and James was the one to notice when he’d wandered to the back in search of a slushee.

“Ah!” He had screamed, laughing. “Shit. Shit!”

It was a mess. The Hoover Dam with a crack. Water was running onto the tile like a torn artery, an unbridled, nonstop gush of fluid. And James had stuck around to _help,_ grabbing for fistful after fistful of napkins to plug up the mess with. After he was done laughing, of course. Steve was in the back, scrambling for a dry mop, and he still could hear James cackling. 

“S’fine. There’s this guy, he doesn’t, like, work here or anything, but he’s real handy. He fixed it. He does stuff like that - fixed our pipes once too - cause I never charge him for his coffee.”

James side-eyes Steve. “That’s nice of you.”

He shrugs. “He’s local.”

Something seems to buzz between them. It’s like they’re both acknowledging that James isn’t from around here, and that’s that. For whatever reason, he doesn’t like to talk about himself. Which is fine by Steve, he’s just used to a more lonely variety of traffic rolling through the store - people who don’t have anyone else to talk to other than the guy selling them their bread and butter. You could ask an old man how his day was around these parts, and thirty seconds later you’d be hearing about his cheating-skank-ex-wife and good-for-nothing-bitchy-kids.

James changing the subject. “You live nearby?”

“Yeah.” Steve coughs over a lungful of smoke, waving a hand breezily down the street. “Down that way. Ten minute walk?”

James nods. He leans back against the stone wall, heels rolling. “So. Figured we should get each other's number. Gotta link I wanna send your way, like we were talking about last time I was around.”

Steve’s heart vaults into his throat. Seriously. He can feel it do a shoulder roll, a somersault, a fucking backflip. The judges flash ten for effort, nine for execution.

“Yeah, sure. That’d be cool.”

He fishes around for his phone, digging it out of his back pocket and handing it over to James. He feels like a kid who just made a new friend. Technically, I mean, he sort of was, in a sense. And that would mean that they _were_ friends now, officially. Not just two dudes who lived in Brooklyn and ran into each other at a convenience store occasionally.

James punches a few numbers in, before glancing over at Steve like he’s studying him. He takes another hit off his cigarette. It's almost artistic, the way he brings his hand to his mouth, the way his tendons flex. Muscle memory. “My name is Bucky, by the way. Don’t think I’ve mentioned that yet.” He hands the phone over, and sure enough, one new contact - Bucky.

Bucky? _Bucky?_ Steve isn’t sure where it originates from - on reflection, he _did_ know that "B" was his middle initial from his I.D. - but whatever. He also sees that James - _Bucky_ \- has texted himself off Steve’s phone, so he’d have Steve’s number. The message is simply the word “dicks.”

Steve takes his phone back. The soda can tumbles in the wind.

* * *

Another text from Bucky comes through late that night, when Steve is just about to drift off to sleep. It’s a link, just as promised, to Seether’s _Isolate and Medicate_ album. He’s halfway through “Same Damn Life” before he messages him back.

_Angry. Angsty. Ur right, I do like. Doesn’t hold a candle to Kurt, tho._

Bucky’s reply comes twenty minutes later: _Lol_

Steve bites his lip. Kind of a dead end for the conversation, lest he wanted to risk looking desperate and just start spamming Bucky. Which he would rather drink bleach than do. Nope. Nada. Not a good move. He’s just plugged his phone into the charger when a _second_ text from Bucky comes through.

_You like alice in chains?_

_Oh fuck yah_

The rest is history. Same as how the hypothetical yet tangible dam of the soda machine broke that afternoon, it’s like another breaks right through the power of their cellular devices. They talk about all things music - whether Weezer is overrated or not, the legacy of Sammy Hagar, hell, they even start ranking Nirvana albums, with, like, a proper system.

_Nevermind is like 10/10 but you can’t actually have it as #1 or else people just think ur a douchebag who heard teen spirit once_

Steve laughs out loud, remembering at the last second he shouldn’t, in case his ma was asleep. It was late by this point, but he finds himself thumbing another message to Bucky. The screen’s glow burned into his eyes.

_Yah yah ur right. Hmm, maybe the mtv unplugged thing as #1? #2 or #3 at least even if you can’t consider it a genuine album bcus where did you sleep last night and the man who sold the world cover are so good_

_Granted second place. Gold medal has 2 be an original. Maybe bleach?_

_Damn bleach is good. Contender for first._

_Yah bleach makes me want to run away to seattle_

_Lol._ Steve texts back. He stalls for a minute. _Are you from there?_

  
  


A minute passes. _Seattle, I meant._

Bucky types for a bit, then starts, then stops, like he’s rewording what he’s saying. It makes Steve feel weirdly nervous. Finally, the alert of a new text dings out.

_I was born in the bronx, but just moved from indiana. Grew up there. Living w my sister rn, she’s a true brooklyn sunshine_

_Oh, that’s cool._

He doesn’t get a response for the longest time, so Steve thinks Bucky has finally went and gone to bed, before his phone flashes bright green and buzzes - an indication that a call is coming through. He’s so surprised he drops it entirely, and has to fish around under the headboard and its dust bunnies.

When he finally presses accept, Steve's breathless. “Hi. Hey.”

“Hey.” Says Bucky. He sounds about ten times more chill than Steve feels. “Hope this isn’t weird. My thumbs just started cramping.”

“Oh, nope. Not at all. Nah.” 

“Cool.” Bucky sounds like he’s shifting. There’s a pause. When he speaks again, his voice is a full octave lower - a seductive _purr._ “What are you wearing?”

Steve’s face burns through each color of the American flag. With the influence of static crackle, Bucky really did sound like some sort of hotline operator. “Shut up.”

He laughs. “Dude, it felt right. I can’t think of the last time I talked over the phone unless it’s with my sister and she’s, like, driving. Oh yeah, I said I lived with her, and I was going to ask - got any roommates?”

Steve lets a purposeful beat pass. “Are you asking me if I’m home alone?”

He can _hear_ Bucky’s smirk. “The student becomes the teacher.”

Nope. No. Now Steve’s thinking of students and teachers, and _students and teachers,_ so he pulls the one card he knows that’ll effectively kill the mood: he brings up his mother. “My mom. Not sure if that’s proper roommate status, but, yeah, it’s always just been me and her.”

“Nice.” Bucky sounds like he means it, even though as far as the list of Lame Things To Say To Someone Cool went, it ranks a little high. Steve honestly doesn’t care either way. His mom was wicked cool. Living with her _did_ feel like being around a cool, slightly hippy roommate, versus, like, an overbearing parent.

Here’s looking at you, Nat. 

Bucky speaks again, voice teasing this time around. “Anything like _Gilmore Girls_?”

Steve snorts. “I’ll let you know as soon as I catch an episode, pal.”

This earns him another laugh. “What sort of shows are you into, then? You can’t say, like, _Breaking Bad._ Everyone likes it. I will seriously judge you if you say _Breaking Bad_ to me right now.”

Steve scrambles for a second choice.

* * *

It’s past three in the morning by the time they finally get off the phone, and even then, they don’t. Steve passes out with the call still going and forces his zombified body out of bed four hours later to go to work with the line dead. As exhausted as he is, he can’t help but let his face split into a grin as the night before rushes back.

Another week goes by. Steve sees Bucky only twice in person, but they text constantly. Under the counter at work, before bed, whenever they’re both still awake as night bled into dawn. It’s menial shit, mostly - music and television and the difference between Midwest and East Coast slang. But they chat about real stuff, too. Bucky still doesn’t like to talk about himself, smoothly managing to switch the track of conversation whenever the spotlight strayed onto him, but Steve had learned his sister was older, named Beck, and the two of them lived near Bushwick. Steve shares a little about his own family as well; he talks a bit about his ma and his uncle, Sean. 

Now though, he’s just texted Bucky about something truly profane. Heartwrenching. Astronomically riveting. 

_Cable died for whatever reason. I am so bored._

Bucky’s response comes through ten seconds later. Steve actually watches his ellipses. 

_Netflix ftw. Want me to kidnap you?_

_Sure. Lmfao._

_You joke steven but I’ll actually do it_

_Counting on it._

He doesn’t get a response back.

* * *

Steve wakes to two things in his room: white moonshine through a now-unlocked window, and a hooded figure crouched at the foot of his bed.

He goes to scream, and a warm hand clamps over his mouth. _“Shh.”_

The intruder laughs - actually fucking _laughs._ Before he can even think, Steve shifts his weight like his uncle taught him to do when he was a runt of a kid still getting the shit beat out of him by older boys in the neighborhood, effectively dislodging his attacker and flipping the both of them over. A toned waist rests heavy under his crotch, and he finds himself staring into a pair of silver-streaked blue eyes while his chest heaves.

_“Bucky?”_

“Yes, it’s _me,_ it’s _Bucky._ Jesus, fuckin’ Jackie Chan. I _toldja_ ’ I’d do it.”

Steve swallows. He realizes he’s in only boxers and a shirt. Bucky smirks from where he's pinned, casual, as if nothing about the circumstances of them being face to face are out of the ordinary.

“I never told you where I lived!”

“Yes you did.” Bucky replies bluntly. “You told me about the cafe down the street from your place, and when you sent me the picture of that mural on the sidewalk, I could see the house number in the back.” 

Oh.

“Well, I totally did not leave the window unlatched.” Steve argues, grasping for straws. He thinks back to a heartbeat ago then. “Wait, do what? You said you’d do what?”

“Kidnap you.” The brunette replies calmly. 

Steve quirks an eyebrow. He has one of Bucky’s wrists pinned down against the mattress; clearly, he’s the one with the leverage here. “Oh, are you?”

And then Bucky surprises him. He uses his free hand to grab for the side of Steve’s neck with a grunt, making him yelp before the room tumbles by in a blur and all of a sudden, _Bucky_ is the one on top of Steve. A suddenly _winded_ Steve. 

He sticks out two fingers to form a mock gun which he presses to the base of Steve’s throat. Warm breath fans over his mouth. “Yep. Kidnapped. We can leave a ransom note for Sarah and everything. Though I fully intend on having you back before six.”

Steve feels his pupils blow out. Yep. Definitely wishes he was wearing pants. Bucky pulls back then, rolling off the bed, and Steve rubs at the phantom mark on his neck where his fingers had been. Bucky rises to his full height, silhouetted by the moon, and Steve can see he’s in a black hoodie, worn jeans, and the same boots as he usually wears.

He crosses over to the open window, slinging a leg through to straddle out onto the fire escape, before giving Steve an expectant glance. “Coming?”

From the way he says it, Steve can tell it’s not a question. 

* * *

The subway terminal is empty, a blur of concrete and piss yellow. Two pairs of footsteps echo down the steps, bounding three down at a time. Bucky whoops. They had just jumped the turnstiles, and even though no transit police were after them, it still felt exhilarating. Hence the running. Plus, the last train was totally about to take off, and they weren’t even close to the end of the platform. 

_“Stand clear of the closing doors, please.”_

“Shit!” Bucky laughs, breathless. His arms churn as he streaks down the walkway. “Go, go! Run!”

The subway hisses. Bucky hurtles himself through the closing doors, landing in a sprawled heap on the sticky floor, and Steve follows suit, throwing himself in right as the door slides shut behind his foot. Warm metal brushes against the heel of his shoe.

They gasp for air. Bucky laughs, incredulously, like he’s in disbelief. “Shit. _Shit._ We made it. We actually made it.”

He starts belting out in song then, a beautiful thing he is with his eyes wild and cheeks flushed, crumpled on the floor yet. _“Took the midnight train, goi-”_

Steve elbows him so he’ll pipe down on the crooning before shuffling around to rest against the subway doors. “You’re insane, you know that?” He’s smiling as he says it. Bucky scoots back on his ass till his own back is against the wall across from Steve, shoulders jolting as the train roared on. They’re both so tall that their spread legs nearly brush.

“Oh, you don’t know the half of it, buddy.” 

“What sort of experience in subway hopping did you get in _Indiana?_ Use a coupla’ cows as vault practice?”

Bucky smirks. He closes his eyes. “I told you, I’m a New Yorker by blood. It’s in my nature.” He stands abruptly then, swaying from one end of the car to the other. Steve watches him as he goes. 

The underground churns by. They pass through a tunnel, and the whole train gets blanketed in a darkness about as thick as black coal. Once he can see again, Steve spots Bucky perched on a dull orange seat a few rows down. He gets up and joins him.

“Wait till you see what I got in mind.” Bucky says, once Steve has settled in place beside him. He’s still winded, leg bouncing lazily.

Steve quirks an eyebrow. “This wasn’t enough to alleviate my boredom?”

“Newsflash, boy. Tonight isn’t just about _you._ This is only phase one. I want to go for a swim.”

“Oh no.”

“Oh _yes.”_

Down the car, a couple of rats start fornicating. Steve can tell by the squeaks. 

* * *

“Jesus, you’re heavy.”

Bucky’s voice is enough to throw Steve from where he’s using the man’s linked hands for a leg-up over the chain linked fence they were squatted in front of. 

“Don’t distract me. I’ll fall.” He doesn’t add that being in Bucky’s general vicinity was already a distraction in and of itself, with the way he was setting his jaw. 

“Thought a distraction from your _crippling_ boredom was the whole point of tonight?”

“Yes, it is, not getting _arrested.”_ Despite his words, he readjusts his hold on the fence before hauling himself over. The hot pink motel sign flashes NO VACANCY right over Bucky’s head.

“Don’t be a baby. I won’t let either of us get arrested. Got enough shit on my permanent record as it is.”

He leaves it at that, and, believe it or not, it doesn’t exactly make Steve feel better about the situation. But before he can think to protest, Bucky is snaking himself over and landing on the concrete with an _oomph._

The pool is still. And beautiful, shining a light blue under the harsh light from the motel’s sign. The chirp of crickets only adds to the ambiance, and Steve lets out a low whistle.

It gets caught in his throat when he notices Bucky is stripping his shirt off. “What are you doing?”

The brunette gives him a strange look, grinning. “Didn’t just hop a fence for nothing. We’re here to swim, aren’t we?”

He laughs at Steve’s blank look. “We can’t just swim in our clothes, Steve.”

Oh, right. Because in a situation involving trespassing and fare dodging, _that_ was what was morally inexcusable. 

He swallows, thickly. Fumbles with the zipper of his own jeans, before kicking them off after his shoes. Bucky pulls his shirt off over his head like he’s twisting a wrapped present loose, and Steve forgets to breathe for a heartbeat. Bucky’s chest is smooth, smooth skin, stretched tight over roped muscle, with the faintest hint of abs heaving almost grey under the moon. There’s a faint scar between two of his lower ribs.

Steve looks away. 

He had just deduced that the boy was his friend days earlier. And you don’t look at friends the way he just did Bucky. 

“Race you in.” Bucky’s voice interjects through his thoughts. Steve feels a rough palm shove at his shoulder, and he finds that Bucky is unclothed down to a loose pair of black boxers. “You owe me twenty bucks if I beat you.”

He takes off like a shot. “Hey!” Steve protests, hopping in place. He was still peeling his socks off.

“I don’t even have twenty dollars on me!”

“Next pack of smokes is on the house, then, courtesy of the store!” Bucky calls back, not even glancing over his shoulder. Time seems to slow down as he jumps off the edge of the pool, a silent arc of long legs and hunched calves, and then the world explodes into white noise and water droplets. 

Steve flinches as stray chlorine hits him in the eyes, but not two seconds go by before he’s following Bucky in. If this was a piece of old-timey literature, there’d probably be a metaphor in that. 

“I win! Can’t wait for my reward.” Bucky preens as he comes up for air, running both hands down the bridge of his nose. His voice is low and his hair is soaked flat against his head. He looks like a drowned ferret attempting a dead-man's float.

Steve splashes him right in the face. The water is _cold._ “I’d probably give you the cigarettes for free anyways, dummy.”

He doesn’t say it, but he doesn’t have to. Tonight felt like a gift and gifts get reimbursed. It’s a good thing he _doesn’t_ say it out loud, though, because Bucky is cutting him off with a declaration of _“CHICKEN FIGHT.”_

One, chicken fights require more than two people. They require two people _per_ team. He can’t even get to his second point, though, because Bucky’s hands are heavy on his shoulders and he’s plunging him below the water. 

Blood roars in his ears. Whirling his arms, Steve opens his mouth to expel his lungs of air so he can sink to the bottom of the pool as the world slows down to a freeze frame. It feels peaceful down there, like the inside of a snow globe. Quiet and still and fuzzy. 

Bucky swims above him like an angel, his hair haloing into a cloud of silk. Forget ferret, he looks like a _mermaid._ Some sort of siren of the sea. He dips real close then, cheeks puffed, close enough that the air bubbles from his nose tickle against Steve’s forehead.

Their eyes lock. Bucky’s are playful and knowing, dilated just so. There’s an edge to them, too, like he might be on something. Steve thought it when he had first followed Bucky out his window, but he was too caught up in the suddenness of everything to think of actually bringing it up. It felt awkward, to just ask someone if they’re on drugs or not. 

Bucky seemed safe, and coherent enough, that Steve had let it slip his mind without acknowledgment. Who was he to judge if a legal adult had an edible before going out? That would be, like, the most normal thing of the night. 

Bucky’s eyes drop to Steve’s lips then. Their ankles brush, smooth and slick. Maybe Bucky isn’t an angel, but he’s something. A prophet. A modern day clairvoyant. Judas reincarnate. Something a pedestal above the rest of everyone else in the world.

Steve’s neck cranes, and for one beautiful moment, they twist together in tandem like a dance is being performed for an audience of two.

Then they come up for air and realize there’s a shotgun pointed squarely between Steve's eyes.

“We’re _guests.”_ Bucky insists, quick as a flash, to the gruff looking man holding the gun in his bear paws. A breeze ripples through the air, and not one grey hair in his ZZ Top worthy beard quivers.

“Funny,” The gun cocks. “Because I sold out the entire place to a bus full of traveling lady nuns earlier.”

“Huh.” Bucky deadpans. “Well. Hm.”

He doesn’t finish the thought. He turns to Steve instead. _“RUN!”_

Except _run_ is more like _desperate doggy paddle,_ and then him and Steve and throwing themselves over the edge of the pool and scrambling for their clothes. The cool night air hits them like a truck. Steve’s pile is closer, so he gets to it quicker, and, dripping wet, he blindly tosses the whole bundle over the fence, (which he realizes they bowed in the initial climb) clambering himself over before Mr. Billy Gibbons back there can think twice about any warning shots. His muscles scream with exertion. 

Bucky is close on his heels, still yelling pure nonsense. “Say hi to the nuns for me!”

Gunfire bites at their footsteps, thunderous like a million firecrackers going off in the gravel. Bucky yelps. “Or not!”

They land with matching thuds, and then the two of them are across the parking lot quicker than you can say twenty-nun jumpstreet. 

Steve realizes he forgot his socks by the pool. 

* * *

They’re hiding by a drainage pipe deep in the woods, breathless for about the tenth time that night. The air is undisturbed save for two pairs of shuddering gasps, the sound bracketing a cocktail mix of fear and adrenaline itself. 

Steve shakes. His ears are ringing. Bucky shakes. Bucky laughs, then, a hushed sort of noise. Steve copies it like he's trying the sound out. He laughs again, stumbling over it with a hitch while Bucky rocks onto his heels, giving these raspy sort of chuckles.

Thirty seconds later, tears are streaming down their cheeks. 

Steve can’t remember the last time he’s laughed like this, where he physically thinks he might vomit from the sheer force of it all. And _that_ thought only makes him laugh all the more harder, while Bucky looks like he’s so lightheaded, he’s seconds away from choking over his own throat.

“Traveling nuns? What the fuck? What the _fuck.”_

"We got _shot_ at. Hey, did that guy look like-”

“ZZ Top?”

_“Yeah.”_

* * *

Bucky spends the night at Steve’s. It’s unspoken, but mutually agreed upon, based on how the night cemented them together. Plus, by the time they finally drag themselves back to the more busy part of Brooklyn, dawn is peeking up over the treetops, and Bucky is clearly too exhausted to make the trek home, wherever that actually is.

Not as if he hasn’t already made himself intimate with Steve’s bedroom anyways.

Shoes come off on the carpet - _wet_ \- followed by their jeans again, and for a split second, it feels like they’re back at the motel, ready to plunge into the wet abyss. They keep their shirts on and Steve retrieves two pairs of baggy sweats for the both of them, before they’re collapsing under his comforter right as the first bird of the morning starts screaming.

Bucky is riding that fine line between consciousness and the dream world, rolling stomach-first over the mattress like he can’t get over how soft it is. His left hand slides under the cool pillow he’s claimed for his own side, warm breath tickling Steve’s neck. 

“We should rent a room.” His eyes are closed, voice slurring over the words, and it takes Steve a moment to understand what it is that he’s talking about. “At a place like that. Queen bed - we can share like we are now - and we can swim however late we want.

_I’d follow you there,_ Steve thinks, watching the way Bucky’s breath evened as sleep took over. He’s mesmerized. _I’d follow you onto the subway at an hour where only addicts and the homeless roam. I’d sneak into a motel pool, as long as you’re the one giving me a boost over the fence._

_I don’t even know you, and I think I’d follow you to a lot of places._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaand chapter two is up! What a ride. Next chapter, stay tuned for: Shit Gets Serious And Bucky Is Sad
> 
> (ft. Sarah Rogers.)


	3. Left Us To Mold

Bucky starts showing up like clockwork with a dwindling pack of Marlboros and his own chipped lighter whenever Steve dips out for his smoke breaks. So much so that Steve actually starts waiting up for him, choosing to sit behind the counter for minutes at a time and drum his fingers instead of christening the alley with cigarette ash by himself like he’d grown so accustomed to doing since he started at the store. Rome wasn’t built in a day, but traditions could be.

Him and Bucky had been texting every night. That is, if they weren’t already calling, or _physically_ hanging out, splayed over one another with some old MMA match on. Steve doesn’t know if it’s weird to feel so comfortable with someone you’ve hardly known a month, but he figures that’s just how nonlinear things go when the person in question shows up through your bedroom window hell-bent on a night of adventure and then strips down to the underwear in a motel pool with you. 

It felt a bit strange, having the sudden presence of a friend who also _happened_ to be a boy in his life, if he was being perfectly honest. Sure, he had Sam, but he sort of felt like an extension of Natasha sometimes. Nat and Peggy were his main squeezes, and yeah, there was Clint, and Brock Rumlow, who he _did_ consider friends, but Steve wasn’t exactly hopping turnstiles with Brock at half-past midnight and hoping he’d hurry up and answer whoever was knocking at the door so they could return to a heated debate on the legitimacy of the moon landing.

So yeah, having a new guy friend felt strange. But in a good way. Very Cameron and Ferris from _Ferris Bueller’s day off._

(Steve totally was Cameron in the analogy. Peggy could be Sloane, ‘cause she was so pretty and _so_ brunette, but Steve did not want to think about Bucky being all moony over her. Even though, inevitably, they’d probably end up running into each other sooner or later, having Steve as common meeting ground, and there was a very tangible chance things would escalate into dreaded romantic territory, considering they were both attractive and all worldly and, presumably, single.

He files it under a problem for later.)

But for as good as things were going with Bucky, they were also a bit...weird? As of late. He seemed out of himself, like someone else had the reins and was just using James Barnes’ meatsuit as a puppet. Tired and lethargic, even when he was laughing. _Especially_ when he was laughing. And sometimes Steve would wake up to a text from him at six in the morning, which was all fine and dandy - Steve _liked_ texts from Bucky - except for the fact that his Discord account would show him being last online at three. So the fact he hadn't slept was obvious.

Steve had tried to approach the subject once when the two of them had found themselves spending a Saturday night tucked into the corner of an arcade. It was a newer place, with vomit green accents and the sort of AC that soaked into your blood. Bucky and him were side by side behind a game called Zomb-X Zone, which was pretty much a first person shooter with flashy graphics.

Bucky was taking headshots like his life depended on it, the butt of the plastic gun pressed into his shoulder like an actual soldier would. The eye closest to Steve was squeezed shut, but he’d still been able to pick up on the dull edge to them Bucky had been carrying all night. 

Steve hesitated. Lowered his own gun. “Hey, man, you alright?”

Bucky smirked, not taking his predator gaze off the screen before him. “Fine. Why?”

Steve felt silly. “I dunno, you just seem...off?”

“Rory, the only thing off here is your aim. Would you stop trying to turn the arcade into a space for chick flick moments and just shoot some damn corpses with me?”

Rory was the name Bucky called him whenever he thought he was being all touchy-feely - like, the daughter from _Gilmore Girls._ Steve grimaces. He’d been called Rory quite a few times these past couple of weeks. “Alright, jackass. Next few rounds are coming out of your wallet.”

“On what _grounds!”_

“On the grounds that you’re a douche.” Steve hovers his finger over the prop trigger, smiling as he purposely lets a horde of virtual zombies dogpile onto Bucky’s character. 

Bucky kicks him in the shin.

* * *

That was two and a half weeks ago. You know what else it had been two and a half weeks since?

The last time Steve heard from Bucky.

Over half a month had passed with nothing but radio silence. It wasn’t as if the reserve was cold turkey - the response time of Bucky’s texts had been dwindling for _days_ \- but it was still as abrupt as a slap to the face. One day, Steve had Bucky, and the next, his calls are getting aired. He stopped showing his face around Tigre Mart, even, the mystery as to why having Steve growing more and more confused. 

He hadn’t thought much of it the first couple of days. Steve still didn’t know _much_ about Bucky's life; he presumed he was busy with a job or maybe school, or family stuff, even. But then around the third day of unanswered texts, he dove off the deep end straight into the worry pool.

_Yo, Bucky, everything okay? Haven’t heard from you in a while. Lmk you’re good_

_Ignore earlier text, am sure that ur fine_

_Okay ignore that one too. I’m trying 2 play things cool but to be frank, I’m worried about you man. Are you like in trouble with someone?_

_Barnes_

_Barnes_

_Bucky?_

Three calls - each ignored. Bucky had been AWOL for about a week at this point, and dread was starting to churn Steve’s stomach thick. He was considering taking things further and going out to hunt Bucky down, but then realization hits him like a truck, a dark sort of feeling - ones with pins and needles and claws. He didn’t know Bucky, didn’t know him at _all_. Not enough to know where he lived - which would be the first place to head to - or even any local spots he might frequent, other than Tigre Mart, which Steve was starting to think he only went to because he didn’t get carded.

Had he been used? Steve’s cheeks burn like something pressed an iron to his face. Had Bucky, or James, or _whoever_ the hell he was, truly, scoped out a sad looking guy behind the register, and after he had gotten what he wanted - a month’s worth of cigarettes and booze in exchange for kinship - left him to rot in the dust?

He doesn’t want to believe Bucky - the Bucky who curled up next to him in his own bed with fairy tale whispers of renting a motel room to just be - would be capable of that sort of cunning deceit. But, then again, he doesn’t even know Bucky, right? How weird was it, that Steve hadn't been clued in to his address yet.

Bitterly, he can’t think of another explanation. Uneasiness still nipped at his heels - okay, maybe Bucky _was_ in danger - but as Monday slipped into a Tuesday, and then a Wednesday, the days blurring together fuzzily, the worry ebbed into a dull pinch versus the wracking sense of guilt it had been when Bucky first went missing. Steve still has half a mind to go to the police in case his latter theory of foul play proved tangible, but he can’t even imagine the social suicide he would be undergoing if he did so, only to discover that Bucky just wasn’t interested anymore, and, _hey, Steve, why the fuck are there cops at my door?_

Even though the hurt passes, the friends he has left notice something is up.

“You got a rotten tooth or somethin’, grumpy?” Natasha poked him square in the cheek. Steve had batted her hand away, halfheartedly. The shed felt _too_ hot and _too_ cramped, even though it was just the three of them.

“Quit it.”

Peggy had feigned shock. “So he _does_ speak!”

“What are you two talking about?”

Nat crosses her legs, humming something that sounded close to disappointment. She looks like a spider. “You’ve been quiet all day, Steven. Scratch that - you’ve been making these little caveman sighs of _despair.”_

She starts mocking him then, grunting out little noises of _“Huh-heh...uhh...”_

“I do not sound like that!”

“Yes, dear, you do.” Peggy pipes up. Steve has to choke down the urge to call her a _Mary Poppins lookin’ chump._ She’d probably actually break his nose if he did. Plus, he doesn't like the idea of calling women chumps. “What’s up, pet?”

He bristles. Then sighs. “Nothing is up. I just...I think I got ghosted? But I can’t tell, not for sure.”

Natasha arches an eyebrow, same as Peggy. Quite the surefire way to catch their attention, that’s for sure. “All of a sudden?” She demands.

Steve thinks. “Well, pretty much.”

“And it was out of the blue?”

“Yeah. Maybe a few dry messages beforehand?”

Natasha clucks. “I think it’s safe to say you definitely got hung out to dry then, poor boy. Ghosting usually _is_ something executed slowly, and over time.”

He groans. Peggy pats his knee comfortingly, her brow furrowed. “Steve, this wouldn’t have anything to do with that... _person_ you brought up a few weeks ago, would it? The out of towner, the one you met at the store.”

Immediately, he gets defensive. “No. Not at all.”

“Okay.” She relinquishes, hands up like she’s all _don’t shoot._ Her nails were painted deep burgundy that day. “Little word of advice then, if you _did_ get blown off, and you’re upset about it - which you totally are, don’t try and hide from _me_ now - there’s only one thing to do.”

Steve leans forward expectantly.

“Get your dick wet and forget all about whoever it is that’s got you down.”

He laughs. “Oh, how eloquently put.”

Natasha rocks into him. “It’s true. Remember how I used to mess around with that one older guy a bit and he totally just started, like, ignoring me? I hooked up with Sam to forget about him, and, well, the rest is history.”

Peggy reels. “You never told us he was a hookup!”

Now it’s Natasha’s turn to blush. Fire burns through her peaches and cream complexion, almost as vivid as her hair. “Yes I did! Yes I _did._ Remember, that one time at Clint’s party? And I was gone for almost an hour?”

“I thought you said that was a guy named Bruce?” Steve cuts in, genuinely confused.

Peggy claps her hands to her cheeks. “It’s happened more than _once?”_

* * *

Life drags back to normal. Well, about as normal as it can get when your mom blares Billy Joel at one in the morning and you and your friends smoke copious amounts of recreational drugs in a shed littered with lifted goods, Linkin Park paraphernalia, and miniature statues of the virgin birth. Point is, Steve has all but forgotten about Bucky and the warmth his presence brought to Steve’s life, like he was some sort of symbolic ray of light. 

Until he comes back.

It’s late in the evening, a shift change at Tigre Mart. Steve has just stepped out of the employee exit in the back, cigarette dangling from his mouth, when he looks up and spots Bucky leaning against the wall opposite him. Bucky looks skittish, downright _nervous_ when he sees Steve seeing him. He smiles timidly, pushing off the wall. Just like he did in Steve’s dream, except this is nothing like the dream, this is all _wrong,_ puts a nasty feeling in the pit of his stomach. Like bile was fighting to rise.

“Steve. Hi. Can we talk?”

Steve stares at him for what feels like forever. “I really should be getting home. Glad to see you’re okay, though.” He says coldly, taking off down the alley without a second thought. The cigarette slips to the pavement below, lost among litter and dirt. Steve doesn’t even look down.

“Steve, _wait!”_

Bucky’s voice is desperate on his back, brittle as nails. “Steve. I’m sorry, okay? Let me explain.”

_You’re sorry._ Steve thinks bitterly. So he _wasn’t_ crazy; Bucky _did_ have a reason to be sorry to Steve. Just as he’d suspected: he’d been used and discarded like yesterday’s underwear. 

His long legs break record ground. He’s walking so fast, Steve honestly thinks Bucky gave up, when he yells something that makes Steve stop right in his tracks.

_“I’m bipolar!”_

Steve actually freezes, boots stilling against the concrete. The muscles in the back of his neck contract like someones squeezing his shoulders together, hot and thick and tight. Bucky’s voice again then, no further close, as if he halted with Steve.

“I have...bipolar disorder. And shit gets weird sometimes. I can’t help it. I didn’t mean to hurt you, honest to _God.”_

Steve turns back, finally, _finally_ looking Bucky in the eyes. His wide, blue eyes. “You can’t help it.” He repeats, tone heavy with disbelief. “You can’t _help it._ Nice explanation, pal.”

With that he takes off once more, yelping when Bucky grabs him by the shoulders, _forces_ him to spin around. “Would you quit _walking away from me,_ damn it! I just told you the most personal thing of my fuckin’ life! _Asshole!”_

Steve’s facade cracks into an inferno of anger. “Where the hell did you go!” He accuses, shoving Bucky backwards.

Bucky, however, makes no real effort to defend himself, even though Lord knows he could probably knock Steve on his ass. He looks sheepish. “I was holed up in my room, mostly.”

_“Mostly?”_

“Look, Steve-”

“No, _don’t.”_ He grimaces. “I was _worried_ about you. Three weeks, Bucky, it’s been almost _three weeks!_ You can’t just check in and out of people’s _lives_ like that.”

“I know, I- _would you stop pushing me!_ I know I fucked up, Steve, but you don’t get it. Bipolar makes you...bad.” His voice drops. “Like, _hide the fuckin’ knives_ bad.”

Steve blinks. Sombers a bit. “Are you telling me you were…?”

“Ready to off myself?" He almost laughs dryly. But he doesn't, because nothing about this is funny. "No. It wasn't so...hard, this time around."

The past sixty seconds of conversation seem to flood Steve all at once, like a VHS tape spitting up its insides to form a mess right on the carpet. “Why didn’t you just tell me about the whole...bipolar thing? You seriously couldn’t even do that to let me know you were _alive,_ Bucky? Shit, I thought you were _in trouble_ with someone.”

At this, Bucky bristles. “Maybe because it’s none of your fucking business? Jesus, maybe for once in my life, I wanted to be known as something other than the headcase. I didn’t have to tell you _shit.”_

“Newsflash, Bucky, you _make_ your bullshit my business when you drag me around New York, getting us _shot at,_ and then disappear for weeks at a time! Is that not a little _weird_ to you?”

“My bullshit?” Bucky backtracks, eyes narrowing. “My _bullshit?”_

A third, distinctly feminine voice breaks in. “Steven. Why in the hell are you and your friend fighting in the street like a couple of banshees for everyone on the east side to hear?”

He blinks. So engrossed in the spat, in his anger, the _worry_ that had flooded back into him at the sight of Bucky like nothing had changed, Steve hadn’t even noticed the two of them had paced all the way to the front of his brownstone. Where his mother was currently stood on the front steps of, tightening a robe style jacket with her feet jammed into Steve’s old boots. Her hair was loose and she smelled like vanilla, waves of it wafting down onto the sidewalk.

“He’s not my…” Steve starts, running a hand down the bridge of his nose. Bucky cuts him off, sudden desperation trumping the anger in his voice from only heartbeats ago.

“Yes, I _am_ his friend.” He bounds across the short yard, sticking his hand out for Sarah to shake. “I’m so sorry, ma’am. We’re just having a disagreement. Pleasure to meet you, I’m James.”

Steve’s mom just looks bemused as she shakes his hand. She gives Steve a look then, equal parts curiosity and perplexion. “Well...why don’t you two go inside to talk? I swear, the neighbors will be calling the cops any second if you keep up this whole... _Rocky_ act in the yard.”

Steve sighs. His shoulders sag then, as if they suddenly weigh tons each. “Yeah, sure, mom. Sorry. You’re right.”

Briskly, he stomps his way inside, not even bothering to see if Bucky’s following. Which he is, of course, because Steve hears him say to Sarah, _“lovely_ to meet you.”

Two minutes later, they’re in his room with the door shut. Bucky’s eyes flit around, like he’s nervous again. Or maybe being in Steve’s room felt weird, now that they were in the daylight, and he could, like, see the little details of Steve marking the place as his. Hastily made bed, numerous posters, various pocket knives and pictures of him and Peggy and Nat and Sam, polaroid style. 

“Your mom is really cool.” Bucky says suddenly, eyeing a Led Zeppelin poster curling off the wall. “She reminds me of, like, Stevie Nicks, and Debbie Harry-”

Steve puts his hand up. “If you’re telling me right now that you think my mother is hot, Bucky, I swear on my life-”

Nervous laughter. “Let me guess. You get that a lot?”

“Kind of comes with the territory of having a parent under thirty-seven.”

“Yeah, I guess.” Bucky muses, licking his lips. Silence. He looks like he’s finally about to say something, when Steve cuts him off.

“You said I don’t get it.”

“Huh?”

“Bipolar disorder.” He replies, taking a seat in the beanbag chair near his mattress. “You said I don’t get it. I can’t exactly argue that - I _don’t._ So explain it to me.”

Steve wasn't entirely clueless. He knew _of_ bipolar disorder, of prominent figures who had it. Hell, Cobain did. Ahem, _Lithium?_

But being _aware_ of something was much different than actually knowing about it. Quite honestly, the only actual frame of reference he had was that girl from _Silver Linings Playbook,_ and frankly, you couldn't blame Steve for questioning the medical accuracy of a Jennifer Lawrence film.

Bucky looks at him like he’s speaking in tongues. “You...are you sure? It's kind of a lot."

Steve is tired. Just wants to shut his brain off for a while and sleep on the fact that Bucky is here, that Bucky is _back._ “Look, Bucky, I thought we were having a pretty good time as friends. I know I was. I...liked being around you. And then you just leave, and I’m trying to understand why. So, explain it to me.”

“Right. Right, okay.” Bucky collapses into the desk chair, drawing his knees to his chest like a boy. Steve can practically see the gears turning in his head, and for a split second, he wonders if he’s crossed a line by inquiring. 

But then Bucky is speaking, the most raw and honest he’s been since Steve met him. This isn't _hey let's ride the subway till dawn,_ or _hey, let's build a pyramid of Eagle 20's to knock down with paper footballs._ “Okay, so...I think, like, the internet could probably explain this better than I can on the spot, but basically...bipolar takes you from one extreme to the other - 'high' and 'low' - like a roller coaster. It's a mental thing. A condition.”

He thinks for a second. “You ever rode the Cyclone at Coney Island?”

“Yeah.” Steve had, once. He threw up. It was a long time ago, but he still remembers the metal and steel, the way the cart ticked precariously to the top like a bomb, only to dangle them off the edge of the drop. It felt like a thousand worms crawling through his stomach. And that wasn’t even the rush, the barreling descent to the bottom slope. 

“It’s like that. Except...it’s not _fun._ It’s manic flashes, false clarity and energy and purpose, _euphoria,_ followed by these...these episodes of lows - depression, I guess - where, jesus, I don’t even feel real. I got diagnosed when I was fifteen, but the moods had been around longer than that.”

He swallows. “When you’re...when you’re like that, Steve, mania’s bitch, depression’s _bitch,_ it messes with you. My brain doesn't...doesn't work like it should. Bipolar makes a person selfish. I’m not trying to yank you around right now, or make excuses, I _swear._ I don’t try to push everyone away, I don’t _want_ to. But, like, sometimes, it’s like I don’t even have a sense of empathy. I’m just so miserable, or _so_ fucking _happy,_ that it doesn’t even register someone might be worried about me, that I’m hurting them. Or, rather, I don’t care. And I know that’s shitty to say, but it’s the truth. I’m trying to be honest with you. It’s like...a weird thing with self-importance, and how a person with bipolar views themself. I did it back in Indiana - lost _everyone,_ because I just didn’t have the ability to put myself into their shoes of what it would feel like to just have someone go distant in the blink of an eye. Fade off. Not reply to texts for days at a time. You lose a lot of friends when people realize they’re putting in way more effort than you are. And, Steve, I don’t want to lose you, too. It kind of scares me how much I don’t want to.”

Steve sits very rigidly, and very quietly. It’s a solid minute before he speaks. “So, you said you were feeling down. Depressed. Uh, low. That’s why you were gone. Does that mean now, you’re...high?” _Manic._

Bucky smiles sadly. “I wish it worked like that. But, no, it’s not, like, a consecutive cycle. Right now, I’m feeling...pretty okay, honestly. Except that I feel rotten to the fuckin' core for jerking you around.”

He’s quick to add that last part. Steve doesn’t know what to say. Bucky keeps talking, desk chair squeaking as he jostled it absentmindedly.

“I guess what I’m trying to say, is that I feel stable. And that’s why I’m finally showing up now. Why I rushed you outside the store. I wanted to wait until I felt stable, felt right in the head, before I tried to talk to you about any of this.”

A million thoughts race through Steve’s mind. “Are you seeing anyone for it?”

“Yes.” Bucky replies honestly. “The first thing Beck made me do when I moved here was see a psychiatrist. I’m on meds and shit.” 

Steve stands slowly, an unravelment of flannel and denim. His eyes are shut, and he looks pained. “Bucky…”

“No.” Bucky rises to his feet, quick as a flash. “Don’t, Steve, _please._ I’m sorry.”

It hurts. But _Steve_ still hurts, and he’s overwhelmed, and fucking exhausted from the double shift he just worked. All he wants to do is grab his laptop and shut off all the lights and spend a few hours doing his own research about bipolar disorder, where he can’t ask stupid questions directly to Bucky’s face. Because despite how shitty what he had done was, Steve still cares what Bucky thinks. He doesn’t want Bucky to think he’s clueless, blind.

“Steve.” Bucky begs. He gaps the space between them, hands on Steve's shoulders like he did out in the street, except it’s different this time, it’s gentle and warm and scared, and then his lips are rolling over Steve’s own.

“I’m sorry.” He mumbles, drawing back only far enough to breath the sentiment, alternating between it and leaning back in to press his mouth over Steve’s own, softly.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Please don’t hate me. I meant what I said. I never want to hurt you.”

It’s last-ditch, desperate. _Please don’t cast me out, please don’t let me go._ Steve doesn’t kiss him back, but he doesn’t move away, either. He stands, still as a statue, willing to stop the room from spinning as he lets Bucky place butterfly touch after butterfly touch on his lips, featherlight.

He kisses back. Parts his mouth, moves his jaw.

The world seems to catch up to him around the fifth or sixth kiss. He grabs for a fistful of Bucky’s front, twisting the material of his shirt, pulling him back just enough to catch his breath.

“Bucky...you need to go.” His voice is barely a strained whisper, but it shatters Bucky all the same. 

“Alright.” He nods numbly, stepping back. “Shit, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have...I never should have…”

Steve has second thoughts on seeing the state his words put the brunette in. Maybe it was infantilizing to think, but he wanted nothing more than to wrap him up, keep him safe from the world. He wanted them to be back at the motel, or in the underground. Coney Island mood swings couldn’t hurt Bucky in that world, where everything was a dark blanket of camaraderie.

“Wait-”

“No, no, you’re right. Steve, I…” Bucky shakes his head. “I should go.”

He’s gone then, out of Steve’s room and down the hallway stairs before Steve can even think to call out after him. But he does then, at the last second, a low cry of _“Bucky.”_

He's left again.  
  


* * *

Steve washes the day off in the shower. He pretends he’s getting baptized, letting all his sins, past and present, choke themselves down the drain. He shuts off the water. It’s stupid; Steve isn’t even religious.

Later, he settles into bed with a freshly nuked hot pocket and his laptop, fully charged. He had been putting off this specific internet search, if he was being honest, but it was time to stop being a pussy. Bucky _lived_ with this, Steve could handle googling it.

_Bipolar disorder_

Immediately, the search term gets a few million hits. _Manic depression. Bipolar 1 and Bipolar 2. Mood swings._

He hits a website at random, trusting the .org that punctuated the url. His eyes glaze over the screen.

_...when you become depressed, you may feel sad or hopeless and lose interest or pleasure in most activities. When your mood shifts to mania or hypomania (less extreme than mania), you may feel euphoric, full of energy or unusually irritable. These mood swings can affect sleep, energy, activity, judgment, behavior and the ability to think clearly._

_Mania and hypomania are two distinct types of episodes, but they have the same symptoms. Mania is more severe than hypomania and causes more noticeable problems at work, school and social activities, as well as relationship difficulties. Mania may also trigger a break from reality (psychosis) and require hospitalization._

The sentence “trigger a break from reality” makes Steve regret the decision of being able to stomach the hot pocket. But, like, the other stuff...yeah, he could see it. He didn’t _want_ to, but it was like the wool was being pulled back off of his eyes. Suddenly, a bunch of stuff made sense - the occasional larger than life personality, the energy, the lack of sleep.

The disappearing act. 

He exits that tab in specific and tries to find something that focuses more on the other side of the coin - the depression. The low to mania’s high. 

_Emptiness. Hopelessness. Suicidal thoughts or action._

None of it was anything Steve hadn’t expected to see, but it makes him feel almost hard inside nonetheless. He finds himself going down the rabbit hole of antipsychotic medication on wikipedia - another term that makes him feel almost queasy - before landing on a site about schizophrenia. Bucky didn’t mention anything about _that,_ but it’s a compelling read, and Steve doesn’t think that familiarizing himself with other forms of mental illness could hurt. Because he wants to learn.

He wants to be there for his friend, even if it stings.

A full day goes by before he’s ready to get in contact with Bucky again. At the back of his head, Steve knows he might be on edge about how they left things, how Steve acted, but the little gremlin part of his brain (the thing he rarely lets come to the light) argues that, _c’mon, Bucky made him wait almost three weeks; twenty-four hours is nothing._

_I don’t want you to think that I think any less of you because of what you told me, that that’s why I made you leave the other day. I shouldn’t have freaked out the way I did. It was just a lot, right after you come back out of thin air. You make me feel a lot of things at once. But I also understand that none of this has anything to do with me, not really. That it's not about me. Still doesn't mean it doesn't suck, tho._

He gets a reply almost immediately.

_Hey, yeah, I get it. Or like, I'm trying to. Empathy issues, remember? I know I fucked up - pls give me a second chance? Last thing I wanted to do was hurt u. I'm new to this whole thing, trying to deal w/ my shit. like actually deal with it and mend the bridges i've started burning vs running away and staying gone. it's not an excuse, just an explanation.  
_

Steve hesitates, thinking of how to reply, when Bucky texts him a second and third time.

_I will show up outside your home with a boombox and my horrible singing voice, bugging ur poor poor mother, until u decide to hang out with me again. We are getting slushies tomorrow and I am paying and u can punch me in the face if u want  
_

_Rory u know u have read receipts on right. A BOOMBOX!!!_  
  
  
Steve can't help it - he breaks out into a grin.  
  
  


_Promise me u won't be an asshole like that again.  
_

The response is instantaneous.

_Cross my heart._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And there we have it: the big insight to Bucky's vague need for the lamotrigine from chapter one. Spent a lot of time going over this chapter - hope it came out (mostly) coherent. As always, thank you for reading! To be continued.


	4. Ain't No Rest for the Wicked

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There are three wants which can never be satisfied: that of the rich wanting more, that of the sick, wanting something different, and that of the traveler, who says, "anywhere but here." 
> 
> —Ralph Waldo Emerson

There’s a hellhound on Bucky’s heels, the beast’s baited, hot breath choking down the back of his own throat. It will drag a smotheringly dark cloud along by the neck and lie in wait for what feels like forever - circling, nipping, but never getting too close. Not yet. For now, the dog just looms. Makes his presence known in the tall grass. Doesn’t bite, but Bucky can already feel the venom creeping into his veins from a set of razor-sharp fangs.

Because the dog will bite. He always does. 

This last time felt like some sort of paranoia induced fluke. Not _as_ sad as sad _could_ be. Bucky had come to think of it as the dog’s test run, before he decides to fully sink his teeth in for the countless time. The hunt never ends; the dog just gets tired sometimes. Fatigued. He wants Bucky to lay in bed for a day or two, or three, or four, before getting back to what he considers “normal.” And that’s when he lets the flip side of the coin come out to play - the little beast Bucky has christened the rat of mania. Running, screaming, burrowing its way up the walls and scratching into your brain. _On the wheel, on the wheel, on the wheel._

Sometimes, the dog made him want to snuff out to nothing more than dust and a tombstone.

Bucky grits his teeth. It wasn’t even a particularly bad episode, and still, he managed to nearly fuck things up entirely with Steve. What he’ll think of him when he’s manic, Lord help the both of them.

Bucky knows what to anticipate when a bad episode lays on the horizon. The last time he was exceptionally manic, he had convinced himself that there was nothing left for him in Indiana - while true, still a very extreme thought to have at the witching hour - and had stolen his mom’s boyfriend’s car to go strike out for himself. He had somewhat of a plan involving a cross-country roadtrip with a finale of going to see his sister, finally. Indiana was a long ways away from where she’d shacked up in Brooklyn. 

He had promptly wrecked said boyfriend’s hummer into a telephone pole doing seventy-five around a turn, Frank Sinatra still blaring from the radio when the cops showed up. 

Bucky really does not want Steve to bear witness to something of that caliber.

With any luck, he won’t.

He shakes his head. It was stupid. And that’s the thing about mania - even you can acknowledge, in the aftermath, that shit like that is certifiably looney toons. But in the moment, it’s like the confidence of something celestial has entered your bloodstream. You’re unstoppable, just going through the motions with your head in a cloud of white-noise. There _isn't_ anything left for you in the land of corn, and who _cares_ how fast you’re going down the interstate, none of this can touch you because you’re unstoppable and you’re not manic depressive like all those doctors say and holy _shit_ is Frank Sinatra the best. 

Bucky can still taste metal in his mouth. The asphalt was warm under his ass as he sat on the curb, head woozy, fingers looping into recently shorn hair. He had cut all the length off with a pocketknife, deciding that the only proper way to commemorate how good he was feeling, how great the future to come would be, was a palpable change to mark the occasion. A metaphor, for the life he was leaving behind. 

Seventy-two hours later, the car had made its final resting place totaled in a junkyard full of dead things alike, the boyfriend split - _I just can’t handle fucking crazy, Winnie, crazy and suicidally stupid_ \- and the only reason Bucky wasn’t in cuffs for grand theft auto and reckless driving was because this nice Jewish cop had a mother who hallucinated dead people, and pulled a few strings to let Bucky off the hook with no more than a verbal warning. And, y’know, a recommendation of a voluntary psychiatric hold. 

Oh, yeah, he got his hair fixed too. Nice and buzzed with a little left on the top, like Brad Pitt with the sides faded. That was just about a year before he let Beck buy him a one way train ticket east. She had different hair then too, shorter and permed straight.

Bucky deduces it’s best to let the whole night from Steve’s bedroom blow over. He’s going to focus on his work doing commission jobs at an auto body shop downtown, fixing bikes. It’s good for him to use his hands. Plus, he really can’t risk speedrunning through more human connection until he gets what he wants; it’s not healthy. He may be a lone wolf, but having a friend wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world. 

Steve was a pretty great balm though, soothing over some of the chips in Bucky’s usual downy facade, and he’d be lying if he said he wasn’t tempted to call him up like everything was normal and go shack out in the woods somewhere like a couple of rabbits. Steve, who smelled sickly sweet, like rotting pumpkins left just a day too long, and peppermint incense. Steve, with his witchy mom, and semi-obscure band posters, and damn long lashes.

So far, he was the best part of moving to New York.

Bucky lights a cigarette and lets the smoke curl against the ceiling. 

* * *

In school, there was a lesson about air resistance and how jumping inside a bus wouldn’t actually move you anywhere, despite how fast the thing was hurtling down the road. Steve honestly can’t fathom the psychics behind it, because now, riding the F, he knows if he lets go of the bar above his head he has a loose grip on, he’ll totally fling off into the stratosphere. 

It’s a tight ride, more people standing than not. Everyone sways together, a domino sort of effect, like the tide’s ripple. Steve’s hand slips a bit, and his pinky brushes up against the one underneath.

Bucky turns his head back from where he was watching the Brooklyn traffic sludge by out a streaky window. He’s so close his legs are practically laced between Steve’s, and every time the crowd jostles either of them, they bump into the other. 

Steve thinks if he doesn’t break the silence he’s going to die.

“So, uhm, Buck. How are you?”

Bucky’s eyes flash condescendingly, but his grin is genuine. He was smelling more and more like the underside of a car as the days went on, smoke and oil, and it drew Steve in like a siren’s call. He fought the urge to lean closer.

“Steve, I appreciate it, but you don’t have to check in on me like that. I told you what I told you because I thought you deserved an explanation, not because I wanted another babysitter. I got enough of that goin’ around between my sister and my shrink.”

Steve’s cheeks burn. The flush spreads all the way down to his ankles, where one rested against the lace of Bucky’s boots. “Noted. Sorry.”

“S’fine.” Bucky shrugs. His Carhartt jacket moves with him. “Don’t apologize. I just don’t want to be a ticking time bomb to you. Y’know.”

“Oh, yeah?” The tone in Steve’s voice, light but quick, surprises even him. “What are you to me, then?”

Bucky’s grin tapers into a smirk. He’s about the same height as Steve, but with his chin dipped low like it was, he had to look up at him underneath wispy lashes. He swallows casually, leaning in so close that Steve actually shudders. Bucky’s breath is warm in his ear, and he thinks back to wet lips mouthing over his own, of them standing exactly like this, face to face, chests brushing, in Steve’s bedroom.

His dick jumps.

“I’m the guy who just kicked your ass at the batting cages.”

Steve chokes over a snort, drawing back. “You _wish._ Oh, and let it be known that _breaking the bat_ doesn’t count towards your score, for future reference.”

The bus slows abruptly, and Bucky clings to Steve’s jacket pocket right as he’s about to fire something back, lurching into his chest _“Jesus,_ warn a guy.”

“Bucky, who exactly are you talking to? New York transit?”

“I’ll fuckin’ talk to New York transit if I want to.” He taps the side of his head, blue eyes wide. “Certifiable, remember?”

There’s an excruciatingly long moment where Steve had absolutely no idea how to respond, until it becomes clear that Bucky was joking. It’s a _joke_. He can laugh. And he does, a bit breathlessly. The crowd sways the other direction, and then the bus is lurching to a halt. Steve is just starting to get antsy squashed between all the people crammed aboard when the doors slide open with a wheeze and cool air pours itself in. The two of them get off wordlessly, shaking out their jackets and landing on the concrete with the sort of shock that makes your blood run ice cold and then white-hot

Skyscrapers loom overhead in the distance. The light catches on the side of Bucky’s face, making him dark blue, then pale yellow as a digital promo image plastered sixty feet high fades to a brighter design. He tilts his head like he’s considering.

“Wanna come over later and watch _T.J. Hooker_ reruns?”

It takes Steve a heartbeat to understand what he’s saying. “At, uh, at yours?”

Bucky laughs. “Yeah, Steve. I’m asking if you want to come over. If that’s _okay_ with you.”

“Shut up. Just...unexpected, that’s all.” He had never been to Bucky’s, and presumably, he had assumed there was some sort of reason for it. It was part of the reasoning behind why he had been so angry the week before; _I’m getting fucking obsessed with this guy and I don’t even know where he lives, what a joke._ “Bucky Barnes wants to have a _slumber party.”_

“Can it before I revoke the invite, punkass. Just figured fair’s fair. Didn’t want you to think I’m holding out on you or anything.”

Something warm crawls up Steve’s stomach, a moth’s flutter at feeling a single brick of someone’s walls come down. This was slack on the leash. He can’t help but grin.

“Jesus, Rory.” Bucky groans. “If I'd've known you’d get so sappy I wouldn't have asked. It’s just my _place._ A shitty house in a bad neighborhood. We’ll watch a shitty show on a shitty flat screen, and make shitty freezer burnt pizza rolls.”

Now it’s Steve’s turn to lean in uncomfortably close. Except they’re not on the bus anymore. “Oh.” He feigns, gingerly reaching out to brush his fingers over the zipper of Bucky’s coat. His nose twitches. “I’m sorry. Am I being sappy right now over the prospect of shittiness? Does that _bother_ you?”

“Fuck off!” Bucky wrenches back, laughter carrying all the way down the block.

* * *

“Steve...Steve!” Bucky pipes up. “You can’t step on the cracks.”

Steve fingers for the cigarette hanging between his lips, passes it over to Bucky. “I thought we _were_ stepping on the cracks.” He chokes a little, blowing smoke out of the corner of his mouth.

“No, no. I can’t explain the pattern. You gotta like...skip every crack and a half.”

“Ew,” Steve points. A used condom lays limply off in the grass, and Bucky snickers. They’d been pointing out random junk to each other for the past mile. Steve found himself especially engrossed with an empty glass bottle with the cork jammed in it down by some apartment buildings. So someone didn’t care to _not_ litter, but they did enough to make sure the cap was on, that the bottle was complete? Riveting shit, truly. They should make case studies on the civilians of New York.

“Ya’ gotta’ wonder what’s the story behind that. Did they, like, fuck here? Like, who fucks _inside_ and then throws the condom _outside._ Heathens.” Bucky takes a drag before handing the cigarette back, turning to face Steve. “So. I feel like I should mention we might run into my sister. She’s cool, but she’s...kinda…” He makes a vague hand gestures. “Extreme.”

Steve raises an eyebrow. “Define extreme.”

“Well, she’s blunt.” He explains. “Says what’s on her mind. She’s not going to be, like, rude, or anything, just don’t be surprised if she drops a _cunt_ bomb before saying hello.”

Steve laughs. “Noted. God. I say that a lot with you, don’t I?”

“You’re a little sponge, Rory, soaking up the knowledge of the world. My world.” 

“And its shittiness?”

_“Mhm-mmh.”_

Bucky unlatches a chain link gate, and then the two of them march up the front steps like cavarly. Except Steve stumbles a little. And there isn’t much effort put into Bucky’s attempt at not laughing. Steve is pretty sure real soldiers aren’t this juvenile.

They’ve just made it inside - a rundown but spacious place - when on cue, Bucky’s sister appears, marching down the stairs on heels. At first, Steve is taken aback. She looks just like him. Same short nose, same willowed frame, same set jawline - it’s like some sort of Picasso where the face blurred and twisted into something else, still recognizable but not at the same time. The only major difference is that her eyes burn a warm brown instead of cold blue, and the auburn tint to her hair is a few shades closer to red than Bucky’s brunette coloring, coming to sit just above the collarbone in loose waves of chocolate. 

“Oh, hey.” She says, tugging a purple sweater on. She’s beautiful and very thin, all sharp edges; pointed shoulder bones, long fingers, small breasts that tent out her layers. Steve makes a very pointed effort not to fixate on that last regard. 

“Beck,” Bucky says, kicking his boots off. Steve follows suit. “Steve. Steve, Beck. My sister.”

Beck looks between the pair, and a wicked grin crosses her face as she adjusts the neckline of her top. _“Aw,_ Bucky made a _friend.”_

He rolls his eyes and gives Steve a very pointed look, voice deadpan. “I’d like to point out that I did, in fact, talk to people in Indiana.”

“Sex addicted drug dealers don’t count as valuable company, James Buchanan. They’re quite the opposite.”

Yep, there’s blunt. Bucky scowls. “Okay, was he, technically, a friend? Yes.”

Steve does however fixate on the pronoun of he.

And, y’know, that Bucky’s middle name is apparently _Buchanan._

Beck turns her attention to Steve then, adjusting another strap. “Whatever. Nice to meet you, Steve. Anyone ever tell you that you look a bit like a young Thom Yorke?”

“That’s what I thought!” Bucky cuts in.

“You two want any money for food? I’m heading out in a few.” She flashes Bucky a very drawn out glance, their eyes speaking about a million words. One, it freaks Steve out how much they’re alike, two matching panthers stalking about the jungle with sleek coats and exotic eyes. Two, he’s starting to get the inkling his name has been brought up before under this roof.

“Nah, we’re good. I just finished a bike down at Eddie’s so I got some spending cash for pizza.”

“Alright. Nice to meetcha’, Steve. I’ll yell when I go.” She’s gone then, ducking into the bathroom off the hall in a flash of boots and skinny jeans. Her perfume follows her. Steve turns to Bucky slowly, popping his tongue. “Well. She did _not_ call me a cunt.”

Bucky snorts a laugh. “I never said that she’d call _you_ one. C’mon, we’ll dump our shit in my room. Lest the princess trips again.”

_“I heard that, asshole!”_

Second floor, third door down past a laundry shoot. As soon as Steve steps in, he feels like he’s been enveloped in a bachelor pad of sorts. Maybe one from a douchey early 2000’s movie. A street sign rests near a sloppily closed dresser, a mess of flannel arms dangling out. There’s a poster of a nude lady stretching on a chair and smoking a cigarette that Steve honestly thinks is quite funny in a weird way, because it’s like, classy. A totally normal shot, except she is _very_ naked. Extremely naked. A-hand-on-her-junk naked.

The carpet is dark and thin, wall painted a dull sort of yellow that spiderweb cracked in a comforting way. Lived in. Made Bucky feel weirdly human.

“Ignore the mess.” He says, quickly going to scoop up a bowl of half-eaten ramen. “Not, uh, not really used to anyone in here, ‘cept Beck. Hold on.” He ducks out then, most likely to get rid of the bowl. Steve looks around a bit more. There’s a few empty beer bottles, a few not empty pill bottles, and what looks to be a folded up butterfly knife sitting atop the dresser, next to some socks. There’s a picture of Beck, too - she’s smiling with her hair up. Steve thinks it’s oddly sweet, to frame a picture of your sibling alone.

“Alright,” Bucky says, reappearing. “My sister cleared out, so we can take over the living room if you want. What sort of pizza do you like? If you say anchovies I’ll kill you.”

Steve snickers. Pot calling the kettle black, Bucky labeling _other_ people blunt. “I don’t care, as long as you add Italian seasoning.”

They make their way downstairs, call in an order to Toppers, and set up camp in front of the TV with the lights set real low. By the time the pizza guy actually gets there, they’ve caught just over two episodes of the old timey cop show. 

“I’m totally Hooker, and you can be Stacy Sheridan.” Bucky announces as he enters the living room carrying a steaming pizza box, having just kicked the door shut behind himself. He’s referring to the program’s protagonist, and his female-sometimes-counterpart/goddaughter. 

“Why can’t I be Hooker?” Steve demands. “Why can’t I be Romano?” He can at _least_ be the sidekick. 

Bucky sets the box down onto a coffee table already ringed with figure-eights. “Because you’re a blonde and I’m not.” They dig into the meal, an aroma of hot cheese and melting crust erupting as Steve tips the top back. He picks up a slice and takes a bite, pulling back so a string of mozzarella hung from his mouth. “And your name starts with an S. Duh.”

Honestly, Stacy looks more like his mom. Feathered hair, loose bangs, wide eyes. Steve knows he has more of his dad’s thing going on, with the broad nose and uneven lips. 

The conversation dies down. As shitty as an eighty’s cop drama could be, it was also weirdly engrossing. It was predictable, and there was a sort of comfort in that. The bad guys enter left stage, shank a few civilians, and then in come the good guys. They always win.

At some point, Steve becomes increasingly aware of the rise and fall of Bucky’s chest. It was one of those things you pick up that you normally don’t, like your own breathing, and then it’s like you can’t _stop_ focusing on it. Their arms brushed each time he exhaled. Warm skin, firm and hairy, black t-shirt rolled up to the elbows. 

The living room is dark, and for that Steve is grateful. A flush is working its way up his neck. He’s sure he might be warm to the touch. The warmth exists inside too, a dangerous little flame Steve’s trying to snuff out, some sort of want for him and Bucky to be touching. More than they are. It’s like a mantra playing in his head as gunshots go off on the TV - _more, more, more._

And then the arm bumping his side lingers, and he’s the one whose breath catches. It’s like Bucky’s flexing, the action thoughtless, except his hand drops flat next to Steve’s on the couch cushion in a way that seems to be the opposite of non deliberate. Neither of them move. A millennium goes by before Steve makes up his mind to test the waters: he slides his little finger closer to Bucky’s. 

They meet. After the longest minute of his life, Bucky silently stretches his finger over Steve’s, who feels like he just huffed a lungful of aerosol. His heart is racing, his head is cotton candy, stomach lurching. They stay like that for a while, pinkies linked in the dark. Steve clears his throat, for lack of anything smooth to do, and Bucky nose-laughs.

“You’re on my side of the sofa.” Steve states. It’s true at least; their arms are still connected pinkie to forearm. And _Steve_ was more polite than to be the one currently manspreading.

“Oh, yeah?” Says Bucky, voice low. His eyes are warm. “And what exactly are you going to do about it?”

Steve pretends to ponder for half a second, and then he’s twisting Bucky’s wrist back and trying to cuff the side of his neck. He actually has leverage like that, the element of surprise coming in handy as he makes a loose fist. Bucky grunts, then laughs, and then they’re properly scuffling, rolling around like two cats. Bucky pulls himself on top somehow, and he throws Steve down against the couch so hard his head cracks across the armrest.

He’s straddling him then, denim thighs split wide. Bucky grabs one wrist, then the other, pinning them down next to Steve’s head. He’s pinned. He’s pinned and he’s vulnerable, and Steve can feel his eyes blow themselves wide, chests heaving in tandem as the brunette’s gaze drops to his lips and back up. 

Bucky dips his head. Their breath mixes, both boys panting into the other’s open mouth. Bucky is solid on top of Steve, practically deadweight with how strong he is, how heavy he is. 

And then their lips meet, hesitant at first, but fierce. Time seems to slow down as much as it speeds up, a blur. Distantly, Steve is aware of Bucky letting go of his wrists to run his fingers through his hair and _yank._ He whines, a breathy sort of noise that Bucky swallows straight into his throat, before letting his own hands explore the lean muscle of Bucky’s lower back. He does it almost jerkily, reluctant to do much else, and lets his brain go on autopilot. It’s all flashes of the boy on top of him: brown hair shining like copper under streetlights, pert lips mouthing over a thin cigarette, wet skin in motel chlorine.

Just as quickly as he kissed him, Bucky pulls back. It’s messy and abrupt, the two of them gasping for air. Bucky is a _very_ good kisser. A string of drool links them mouth to mouth. He runs the back of a hand over his, before staring Steve down almost dubiously, eyebrow cocked.

“I don’t want a boyfriend.”

It’s so random, such a stray declaration, that Steve arches his own brow. His lower face feels sucked raw. “Bucky, you are literally the first guy I have kissed. Ever. Not exactly looking for something either.”

“Glad we’re on the same page then.” Without another word, Bucky’s lips drop to Steve’s neck. He’s gentle there, almost tender as he kisses a patch up one side, before moving to the other and doing the same. Steve lets his eyes flutter shut, a silent moan flushing from his throat. Bucky’s hands feel up his arms again, and this time, Steve flips the two of them over so _he’s_ the one on top. He palms at the side of his face, tugging Bucky’s head back so he can kiss him better. Clearer. Easier. 

They spend the better part of the night like that, tucked into the couch, tucked under the roof, tucked under the Brooklyn sky. And the beast is staved off for another day.


End file.
